In health care environments in which sick or elderly patients are cared for, a source of pure or high-concentration oxygen is often necessary to assist in the breathing process. In the past, such oxygen has been provided or supplemented through the use of pressurized tanks and/or liquid oxygen systems. Although the tanks have been suitable for their intended purpose, the tanks require pick-up, refilling, and delivery when the initial oxygen supply is depleted.
Some devices have been developed to separate, concentrate or generate oxygen from ambient air. Most of these systems are based on pressure-swing adsorption (PSA) systems which use a material such as zeolite as a mechanical trap (or molecular sieve) which operates as a physical separation material and allows oxygen to pass more readily than the other gaseous components. These devices are bulky, loud and degrade over their useful life as the zeolite material degrades. Furthermore, the concentration of produced oxygen is only about 95 percent pure and the purity level degrades over the lifetime of the system, and at higher flow rates. This characteristic is undesirable since standard oxygen generating systems typically require at least an 85 percent oxygen purity level to be therapeutically valuable. Consequently, regular servicing of the unit is required.
Oxygen generating systems are often used in nursing homes, private residences and other locations which are physically removed from the patient's primary care physician or the medical equipment service provider. Consequently, monitoring the oxygen generating system to determine the status of the oxygen purity level and other system parameters such as the oxygen flow rate are expensive and time-consuming because they require a physician or service technician to physically visit the patient to monitor and evaluate the oxygen generating system.
Consequently, there is a strong need in the art for an oxygen generating system which provides pure or high-concentration oxygen to a user in a quiet, efficient manner which does not occupy a lot of space, and allows a physician or equipment provider personnel to monitor the status of the system in an inexpensive and time-efficient manner.